


Amaranthine

by holbytlanna



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Feral Mac, Friends to Lovers, Let Jack Dalton Say Fuck, Mild Gore, Suicidal Thoughts, Team as Family, Trigger warning:, Whump, aaaaaangst, jack never left, more tags and characters to be added as the story progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:07:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29032176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holbytlanna/pseuds/holbytlanna
Summary: An idea that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go.A mission goes very badly wrong. Worse than usual.That's all the summary I can give you :)
Relationships: Jack Dalton & Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016), Jack Dalton (MacGyver TV 2016) & Riley Davis, Riley Davis/Angus MacGyver (MacGyver TV 2016)
Comments: 47
Kudos: 94





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Amaranthine: undying, immortal, unfading. A red flower, also called "love-lies-bleeding"

If there was one thing Jack hated — aside from meatloaf, don’t tell Bozer — it was being on a mission without comms. Well, he had his comms earpiece in, and it was working just fine, but that didn’t do him a whole lot of good when both Mac and Riley’s comms had failed. And he couldn’t get to them either, he was on the complete other side of the building the three of them had gone into. Jack was clearing it in case the bomb Mac and Riley were looking for went off. Just routine stuff. Until they had lost radio contact, a few minutes ago.

_Jack can hear Mac’s bomb-detector doohickey beeping like a cartoon metal detector. Beep. Beep. Beepbeepbeepbeebebebebeeeep!_

_“Okay, looks like it’s through this door here.” Mac’s voice crackles over his comms. Something is interfering with their signal._

_The sound of an electronic lock clicking, the latch turning, and Riley whistles over her own comms._

_“That’s… a lot smaller than I expected.”_

_Jack makes a risqué joke that has Matty barking “Dalton!” sharply over comms. Her voice is crystal clear in Jack’s ear, it’s only Mac’s and Riley’s comms that are fritzing out._

_They find the bomb, Jack hears over comms. Mac takes one look and knows he can’t disarm it in the blinking timer’s span, but he also can tell it isn’t very big. They’re gonna shore it up a bit and run for it._

_“Jack, what side of the building are you on?”_

_“Uhhh. The far one. I’m seeing offices. East?”_

_“Okay, you’ll be out of the blast, just stay on that side of th—” The comms scrrtch out for no apparent reason, leaving Mac and Riley dead in the water._

And now here he was, with only Matty’s voice in his ear for company, clearing a building that had, for some reason, been targeted for an attack. Phoenix wasn’t sure why, or even by whom. All the intel had said was that a bomb was going to be planted in the building at this date and approximate time. 

Jack hadn’t heard or felt the bomb go off yet, so that couldn’t have been what was causing the interference with Mac and Riley’s comms. And he knew he didn't have time to run to the other side to get his kids. He just had to trust that they could take care of themselves. 

The building was clear. It was after-hours, so there shouldn’t have been anyone in there in the first place, but the team had learned the hard way to always triple-check that a building was cleared. The last time, Mac had nearly wound up in prison for domestic terrorism. Although that time hadn’t technically been their fault.

Suddenly, the building rattled. Jack dropped, covering his head in anticipation of debris, but there was none. The explosion had been small, contained. It hadn’t reached the east side of the building, just like Mac had said.

“Mac? Riley? Tell me you got clear,” he begged. He heard their comms scrrtching in and out of focus. He couldn’t tell what was going on. He couldn’t quite make out what they were saying or doing, but it didn’t sound like their comms had gone out completely yet.

“Mac? MacGyver, respond if you can hear me. Riley?” Jack could hear the apprehension in Matty’s voice. There wasn’t a direct response, not from either of them. He thought he heard the tell-tale sounds of a fight. A fist striking flesh, muffled grunts. It was all engulfed in radio static.

“Jack, find them.” It was a direct order, one that Jack didn’t have to think twice about obeying. He backtracked the steps he had taken to clear the building, reclearing it to find his kids. Not in the bare, beige-painted upper levels. Not in the offices. The surroundings were getting more and more damaged, the closer he came to the bomb site. There was no more static in the comms, they both had gone silent, unnerving Jack to no end. It had been several minutes since the explosion.

Finally, Jack reached what looked to him like the epicenter of the explosion. And he should know, having worked Overwatch for EODs as long as he had. He had seen more than his share of bomb sites.

“Okay, Matty, there’s no sign of them as far as I’ve searched. I’m just now at where the bomb was. There’s a few small fires burning, but nothing too serious. I guess Mac was right when he said it was small. Shouldn’t be too bad for the cleanup crew.” He stepped around what looked like it had been a desk. “I, uh. I’m seeing parts of wiring that made up the bomb. And there’s, uh…” Whatever he had been about to say was driven from his mind as he caught whiff of a particular smell, and saw a particular sight. One that chased him since he had enlisted in the army fresh out of high school, one that haunted his nightmares still. “Oh God…”

“What is it, Dalton?”

Jack swallows. “It’s, uh... Was. Was human.” He crouched down to get a better look. Debris had fallen all over the body, hiding much of it from sight, but what he could see wasn’t good. Ashy bone was all that was really left. The explosion had been small, but this person must have been very close to the bomb. “Oh please, no.”

As often as Jack said he would know his kids anywhere, he couldn’t ID the body from just bone. He muttered a prayer as he cast his eyes around the remains, looking for something, _anything,_ to tell him that this was just a security guard in the wrong place at a terrible time. One of the terrorists who had planted the bomb. An unfortunate office worker.

Frantic desperation suddenly turned numb and ice-cold. Jack felt his world drop out from beneath him as his gaze fell to where a hand had been. _No, God, no._ Two rings lay in the dust, where the fragile bones in the hand had disintegrated. One was a simple silver band, coated with dark soot, and the other the same soot-stained silver, multiple thin bands all woven together. He knew those rings.

“Jack?”

He was breathing heavily, though he was hardly aware of it. “Please no, no, baby I…” He what? What could he say to this charred body that had once been the brightest soul in any room? He felt tears course down his face without really realising it. His baby girl… What would he tell Diane? God, she’d kill him. And he’d deserve it. For bringing Riley into this dangerous business, putting her life at risk over and over. He thought he could keep her safe, protect her even as he endangered her. Adrenaline and grief strangled him as he croaked out “I’m so sorry, baby.” _I failed you. Again._

What would he tell Mac? He liked to tease the two of them for living together, and even though the two of them assured him often that theirs was a purely platonic house-sharing, Jack knew Mac had been developing some feelings for his little girl. How could he not know, with the way Mac would look at her sometimes, like she was every important thing in the world rolled into one stunningly beautiful and badass package? His little girl. Jack clutched the two rings tight in his fist. 

He could barely hear Matty in his comms over the rushing of blood in his ears, the fires crackling around him and his head screaming _no, no, no._ She was asking for confirmation that Riley was… Jack was no stranger to death, but he couldn’t bring himself to even think the word, even as he knelt by the body of the girl he had watched grow into a woman. Who he had hoped to someday see walk down the aisle (he had harboured a secret dream that she would ask him to be the one to give her away, even though he knew he didn’t deserve that). He had hoped someday to hold grandbabies with intense dark brown eyes and dark curly hair. 

“Ri, Riley, oh God I’m so sorry,” he sobbed, not caring, not even thinking that someone might hear him over comms or through the burnt shell of the walls. Everything felt so unreal. He had always known there was a possibility this job could take one of his kids away from him, but not like this, not now, not today, not ever, _please._ He choked on a sob, and that together with the acrid smell of burnt flesh and the knowledge that it was _hers_ made him vomit.

_Mac. Where is Mac?_

He and Mac would be able to buttress one another against the loss of Riley ( _darling Riley, please no_ ). They could find in each other a reason to keep going, no matter how much it would hurt to live without their brilliant Riley ( _no no no please God not my baby girl_ ). The same would have been true if Mac had been the first to leave this world. Jack would stay by Riley’s side, even if it broke his heart not to follow his boy. “You go kaboom, I go kaboom” was their promise, but the two had become three. No matter which of them was lost, the other two would be there to comfort one another. Always.

Mac and Riley had been near each other the last he’d heard over their broken comms, so it stood to reason, even in Jack’s disjointed thoughts, that if Riley was here, Mac should be nearby. He wouldn’t have left her, not like this. If he was here, and still somehow ( _please_ ) alive, Mac would need him. But if he lost both of his kids this day… well it wouldn’t be too long before he found them again, to put it gently. Who could ask him to go on without them?

He searched the rubble for him, shaking, crying, praying. His heart felt like it had been torn out of his chest. Maybe it would hurt less to find only a body. Then at least there was the promise of being able to follow. Living with the survivor’s guilt would be torture for the both of them, if Mac was alive.  
  


Jack kept going, kept looking with unparalleled desperation and eyes stinging with tears, but he knew that if he found Mac’s body in this ashy rubble too, he would have no reason to keep going any further.


	2. Chapter 2

Mac could tell with one look that the bomb was small, complex, with a very short fuse. The timer blinked cheerfully up at him with bright red numbers. It seemed like every bomb used red numbers (part of the reason why Mac’s alarm clock had a green display: he used to have a red one, but he had torn it apart trying to “disarm” it under the influence of heavy painkillers and a massive concussion). 08:04, 08:03, 08:02… The army had trained him for bomb disposal, and he had been one of the best, but even Mac couldn’t disarm something this complex in eight minutes. 

Fortunately, disarming wasn’t the only thing he had been taught as an EOD Specialist. Containment often worked to minimise blast area and subsequent casualties, both living and structural. “Okay, Riles, we’re gonna have to contain it. Help me tip this desk over.”

The pair of them set to work barricading doors and windows and the bomb itself to help minimise the blast. It would still do a fair bit of damage, but with their efforts, hopefully the building would remain standing. “Jack, what side of the building are you on?”

Jack’s voice sounded tinny and fake in his comm piece. “Uhhh. The far one. I’m seeing offices. East?”

Mac glanced at the blinking timer (five minutes) and did some math real quickly in his head as he and Riley lifted a gorgeous, heavy mahogany table and turned it onto its side. “Okay, you’ll be out of the blast, just stay on that side of the building. You'll probably feel the shockwave rattle the building, but that should be it.”

No response. He looked to Riley, and she shook her head. She hadn’t heard anything from Jack either.   
  


“Jack? Did you hear me?” Nothing. “Matty?”

But neither he nor Riley could hear anything out of their comms. Something must have been interfering with them, maybe the bomb itself, given the electrical components wired into it. Mac could only hope that Jack had heard him say to stay away before their comms had cut.

Finally, with four minutes left on the clock and all the furniture readily available used up, the small room was as secure as it was going to be. 

“Since Jack can’t hear us, I’m gonna take this time to steal his catchphrase,” Riley grinned at him. “Let’s bounce.”

Mac laughed as they ran, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and the impending explosion.  _ This feels normal, _ he thought, because really, it was. Running headlong from danger together, with comms gone out somehow and a bomb about to go off. Hoping they get out of the blast area in time. All in a day’s work. He looked over to Riley, to make sure she was still with him. And she was. Despite her skinny jeans and clunky boots that gave her an extra two inches in height (still shorter than him by a good couple inches), she flashed a smirk and called out “Race you!” She ran ahead into the crashbar of a door, flinging it open before her just seconds ahead of Mac.  _ This feels good,  _ he thought, with her laughter ringing in his ears and their feet pounding on linoleum floors and adrenaline pumping through his veins. He and Riley were cheating death again, like they always did. Outrunning the grave together and saving lives.

_ This feels right,  _ he thought as she smiled back at him and he felt a breathlessness that had nothing to do with running.

He had lost count of the minutes ticking down in his head when they ran into a large empty area with tall, warehouse-like ceilings and a concrete floor.  _ Maybe a loading area?  _ Mac couldn’t tell. He was a little distracted by the ten or so guys who were all of a sudden right on top of them. 

“Hadn’t Jack cleared the building?” Mac yelled to Riley as they dove into the fight with abandon. They were lucky: none of the men were wearing protective gear, and it didn’t look like they had weapons on them either. They were relying on sheer strength in numbers.

Riley elbowed one of the men in a place that had him dropping to the concrete and made Mac wince to even think about. “Oh, who knows?” she grunted, moving to take out another.

Riley was giving her all, and she was damn good in a catfight. Mac had seen her spar, and even sparred with her (and if he were honest, the shower he had taken afterward had needed to be  _ very  _ cold because she had somehow managed to pin him to the mat with her hips and he could  _ not  _ be having those kinds of ideas about his coworker and friend and  _ Jack’s sort-of daughter for crying out loud _ ). This time, Mac couldn’t watch, didn’t have time to be impressed by her perfect knockout punches and dirty-fighting. He was dealing with several of his own goons. He was trying to think as he jabbed and blocked and spun, trying to take in his surroundings and to “MacGyver” something that would help them beat their really terrible odds. All he had managed, in between punching and avoiding being punched, were some half-baked ideas that would all take too long, when he heard Riley shriek his name.

He looked to her, and saw her surrounded by at least four of the thugs. There were two unconscious at her feet, but the rest looked angry. She had grabbed a piece of PVC pipe as thick as her arm and twice as long, and was using it to fend them off, but they kept grabbing at her, trying to pin her arms to her body. It looked to Mac like they were trying to carry her off. 

_ Oh, hell no.  _ Not his Riley, not on his watch.

Mac’s distraction allowed his last remaining adversary to land him a hard blow to his chest, sending Mac backward into a pallet loaded high with reams of paper. He heard a crack echo through his body, and groaned as stars popped bright in his vision. That was a broken rib, he knew for sure. But he had no time to focus on himself. Riley needed him. She was struggling like mad, and doing a fair job of defending herself with her improvised weapon, but she couldn’t keep it up forever, not against four men twice her size. She was going to need some help. Mac took out his knife, whipping open the largest blade as he knocked the last of the men that had targeted him to the floor. The only ones left were the ones surrounding Riley.

Fuelled by the sounds of her desperate fighting, and the adrenaline (and emotions he was  _ a little too busy to categorise right now, please and thank you _ ), he jabbed the blade hard into one of their shoulders, all three inches up to the handle. Nothing fatal, just painful enough to distract the guy from Riley so that Mac could knock him out with a hard blow to the head. He didn’t have time for a more clever solution.

He was about to grab the next closest man and repeat the process when the building shook. Their bomb went off. He met Riley’s eyes, and saw mirrored in them his own hope that Jack had been clear and that they themselves were far enough to be safe. He also saw in her bright brown eyes her determination, anger, and just the tiniest bit of fear. She would have been crazy if she wasn’t a little scared; Mac certainly was. But he was not going to lose her today, not ever. He would die first.

The building settled. There was no debris falling, no damage at all to the place they were in. It disrupted the fight for just long enough, however, for a bald, skeezy-looking man to take advantage of the lull, coming up behind Riley and grabbing a handful of her curly ponytail. He pulled hard, and she _ screamed. _

Mac prided himself on keeping a level head during a crisis. That was his entire job, and often there were several lives that depended on that ability. But as that scream of pain and fury echoed through the warehouse room, ringing in Mac’s ears, he just absolutely lost it. The three other thugs were driven completely out of his mind as Mac saw the bastard pull Riley close by her hair, flush against his body. Everything was a haze of red to Mac, as if anger had manifested a tinted film over his eyes. As Riley wrenched herself out of the man’s grip with tears of pain falling down her beautiful face along with blood from a split lip, Mac barreled into him with teeth gritted and his knife held tightly in his fist. 

He caught the man by the back of his shirt collar, and whipped him around so that his back was against Mac’s chest and Mac’s knife hand was at his throat. He acted before his brain could catch up with him and stay his hand. 

Blood coated his knife, his hand, even splattering up to his elbow in places, hot and red and viscid. He barely felt it, watching the body slump to the floor, twitching slightly and gurgling and staining the concrete crimson.

There had been no rational thought process, nothing except cause and effect.  _ He hurt her. He made her scream. I’ll kill him. _ Mac didn’t usually kill people so directly, so brutally. Maybe later, once his blood cooled and the adrenaline faded, he would feel remorse for the murder.  _ But then again,  _ Mac thought as his eye caught on the locks of dark curls still caught in the dead man’s meaty fist,  _ maybe I won’t. _

“Mac!” he heard Riley call out again, desperate and scared, and he tore his attention away from his gory retribution. Riley was being dragged off by two of the biggest men, kicking and screaming and fighting, but inevitably moving slowly toward the door. And if he let them get her through that door, they would be able to get her to a car, then a plane. They could take her anywhere.

“Get your hands off her!” he cried out, growling furiously. He tried to run to her, to catch up and tear those men apart limb from limb. With the amount of anger and adrenaline in his body, he might actually have been strong enough to do it. He had no time or attention to spare for the whereabouts of the third man, the only thing that mattered — the  _ only thing  _ — was Riley. Her name was a litany in his head, _ Riley, I have to get to Riley, I have to get to her, save her, get to Riley, Riley, Riley— _

Someone came up behind Mac, someone he didn’t hear or notice until far too late. He saw Riley’s eyes widen and she opened her mouth to yell, maybe to warn him. The last thing he saw was Riley being carried away, fighting wildly and calling for him, and the last thing he felt was an agony entirely unrelated to the crack of wood against his skull.


	3. Chapter 3

Room by room, in a desperate search, Jack wandered. Blinded by tears and brain fuzzed with fading adrenaline and shock and grief that threatened to bring him to his knees with every step, he staggered, looking for Mac. 

He knew Matty was giving orders in his comms, some to him and some to others. Clean up the debris, the fires. The bones. 

Find Mac. 

Because Mac wasn’t there with Riley. There was only one body, and there was no soot-stained little knife or a shattered watch face. Mac hadn’t been in the room with her. She had been alone when she…

Jack staggered into a desk, bracing his weight on it. He couldn’t keep going, he couldn’t bear to keep going. His breathing was so heavy, nearly hyperventilating, a constant, unwelcome reminder that he was still alive. Leaving his baby’s body had been the hardest thing he had ever done. Even harder than leaving her when she was young. Younger. Because Riley had been so young, barely thirty, and she had died alone.

He hated to leave her body alone in the detritus, but he couldn’t stay near for one second longer, face-to-face with his failure. Looking for Mac gave him a purpose. It was the only purpose he had left. 

Jack had been all over the building, with no sign of his partner. He still couldn’t quite believe that Mac would have left Riley to die alone: even if Jack wasn’t nearly positive that Mac had some burgeoning feelings for her, it just wasn’t in Mac’s nature to leave anyone like that. Abandonment early in his life could easily have turned Mac bitter, made him callous and closed off. But instead, he was kind, literal sunshine in the darkness that was his life. Mac had found a new family for himself, and Jack knew that he would die before he abandoned any of them. There must have been a reason, something Jack just couldn’t see.

Jack was wasting time. He needed to keep looking. His musing wouldn’t help Mac, if he was still alive. 

More empty offices, with no Mac in sight. Hope was very, very quickly abandoning Jack. 

Hope. That was something Jack Dalton had thought he had lost many, many years ago. He had enlisted in the army fresh out of high school because he had no other prospects, and wanted to do something with his life. Growing up in red-blooded Texas, there was no shame in a man foregoing college to serve his country. His Pop had been proud of him, and so had Ma, though she had cried softly as her Jack Wyatt left. 

Fresh-faced Private Dalton saw death in a way far different from the way he had on the ranch. Slaughtering animals was different from slaughtering men. There was something in the eyes of a dying man that there never was in an animal, no matter how beloved a pet it had been. Out there, Jack saw inhumanity on both sides of the battlefield, and within himself. 

He was very good at shooting people. He rose through ranks quickly, was selected for Special Forces and then for Delta. And then the CIA hand-picked him for his skillset. No one asked him how he slept at night, carrying out their missions. Agent Dalton was a good operative, and that’s what mattered. He felt less and less human with every kill, less and less safe to be around. Every time he was near civilians, he was reminded starkly of just how much they didn’t  _ know,  _ how little they understood about death and humanity and the inhumanity walking among them. 

Sarah helped, some. She gave Jack a bit of hope that this job didn’t destroy his heart completely. And when Sarah and Jack were assigned far, far away from each other, Jack tried to make a life for himself with Diane and Riley.  _ God, his Riley…  _ They had given him hope again, that maybe he could have a normal life, maybe he could still be a good person. A good boyfriend, maybe even a husband and father someday. But he should have known that the violence that his job had trained him into would surface. He should have known that civilian attachments could never end well.

His career in the CIA ended with a bang. An explosive argument with his feisty handler Webber had him packing his bags and heading overseas for bomb-nerd-babysitting overnight. Working with EODs was a dream come true for a world-weary soldier like Jack. If he and his tech did their job right, they saved a lot of lives. And if something went wrong, it would very quickly become someone else’s problem. Hard to ask much of a dead man. 

Jack had nothing to live for but the hope of Texas and going home. Until he met Carl’s Junior. 

Angus MacGyver. What a name, and what a guy. To say they got off on the wrong foot was a massive understatement. Jack hated that upstart punk for a solid month and a half. But damn if he wasn’t gonna do his job right, skinny blond bomb-nerds notwithstanding. He was a good Overwatch, just as he had been a good sniper and a good CIA operative. He was good at what he did. And he was going to make sure MacGyver got home, because even if he didn’t like him, the kid’s family probably wanted him back in one piece. 

It took a while, but Jack came to realize that the kid had no family, none worth speaking of. His dad skipped out on him (a dick move, you’ve gotta take responsibility for kids you bring into this world, Jack knew), his mom was taken by cancer (God rest her soul) and his grandfather had passed not too long after the boy enlisted. All this kid had was a friend watching the house, now. 

And Jack. He had Jack. Jack wasn’t sure when it happened, but something in him shifted and he knew that the kid was gonna have a permanent place in his heart.  _ Damn. So much for Texas. _

But the thing was, Jack had gone back overseas to do some good before he died. Go out in a literal blaze of glory. He had had no hope left for a real future, because the job had messed him up so bad. And the kid — Mac — had turned that upside down. He gave Jack not only a purpose again, but real, true hope. That he wasn’t broken beyond repair, that the world needed him. It needed him to watch the wunderkind’s back, because Mac was something special, and Jack wanted to do everything he could to keep him safe.

That and the fact that he kinda grew on Jack a little… like a stray dog (or maybe a raccoon, the way he was always rooting through trash bins to build gizmos, and with those dark, sleepy circles under his startlingly blue eyes).

Mac had given Jack purpose again, after years adrift. Together, they were an unbeatable team. Add Riley, Matty and Bozer to the mix, and they were golden. No plot too dastardly, no terrorist too terrible to get the better of Team Phoenix.

Until now. Jack was ambling without purpose again, just like before. He needed Mac. Needed the kid to scrape him off the ground Jack wanted so desperately to collapse onto, and sob his heart out for Riley. 

If Mac was gone… 

Jack didn’t have time to think like that just yet. Mac had always been the one to give him hope, had been for years. He had to hold on to that hope for just a little while longer. 

But it was hard not to let worst-case scenarios float into his mind. Jack had seen death so many times. Seen it and dished it out. He made light of the dreams where he died, because they weren’t the worst he’d seen. The worst ones were the ones where his kids died. 

Just like this one.

Was he dreaming? When he died in his dreams, he woke up, so maybe if he…?

But no, on the chance that he wasn’t dreaming and that Mac was still alive, he had to keep living. He would stay alive for Mac. Mac would need him still.

But that didn’t stop the images, memories from his nightmares. Mac with eyes wide and dull and glassy. That ingenious brain splattered on the floor. Or soaking wet hair and a chest that will never rise with breath again, no matter how many ribs Jack breaks trying to resuscitate him. Or a broken body at the bottom of a long drop, and the knowledge that Mac would have been absolutely terrified up until the moment of impact.

And superimposed over every image, charred bone, the smell of seared hair and flesh. And two silver rings, even now digging into his fist where he clutched them.

It was a wonder Jack even made it into whatever kind of loading dock the last place he needed to search was. He couldn’t see for tears, and barely had the strength to stagger over the threshold from carpeted hallway to concrete floor.

What he saw there was a disaster. Most product receiving areas were kept generally fairly tidy, at least in Jack’s experience. This one looked like it had a hurricane blow through it. Either someone was incredibly disorganised, or there had been a melée. Jack could count at least four motionless bodies littering the floor, and a lot of blood.

One of the inert bodies was blond. 

Jack ran over to Mac, calling his name in a choked, desperate cry. He forgot completely that he was still on comms with Matty as he took in the blood covering Mac. Praying and begging for him to be alright, to wake up, Jack could barely do more than clutch Mac tightly to his chest, rocking him the way he wanted so desperately to rock Riley’s body. 

“Mac, buddy, I’m here, I found you, oh God. Please wake up, Mackie, please, I can’t…”  _ I can’t lose you too.  _ “Come on, please Mac, c’mon, wake up for me. I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, please. Please wake up, baby, I’m so  _ sorry!” _

Mac didn’t respond to Jack’s tears, his pleas, his apologies.

“Dalton!” Matty snapped in his ear. “Status report on MacGyver!” Her sharp voice snapped him out of his spiralling panic.

Status report. He could do that. He had had it drilled into him since he was just a kid in the army. 

“Yes, Ma’am. Receiving area on the ground floor of the building, agent Dalton calling in. One non-hostile patient, routine injury—”  _ what about this was routine? _ “—Agent MacGyver is down. No conscious hostiles in the area. MacGyver appears unconscious, looks like a blow to the back of the head.” Jack didn’t know what he was saying, he was merely relaying his altered 9-line report by rote. It was easier that way, to simply call in a casualty than to think about the body in his arms. 

“Pulse slow.” He paused to count. “Around 50 bpm. Breathing unrestricted and steady.” He patted the torso down, checking for and finding broken ribs. “One rib broken, right side, a few more feel cracked around it. No other visible injuries.”

“Good, Jack,” he heard Matty say. “Medevac’s on their way to you now, five minutes.”

Jack nodded, forgetting that Matty couldn’t see him, and not caring much either way. Mac’s right hand was coated in blood, up to the elbow, and blood was spattered all across his upper body. It stained his light blue button-down and created a pattern of dark spray seeping into the brown leather of his jacket. In his hand was his little red knife. The big blade was out, and every bit as bloodsoaked as the hand holding it.

But the blood wasn’t Mac’s; he wasn’t hurt that badly. Jack looked around. The two bodies nearest Mac seemed to be where the blood had come from. One was unconscious, with a blooming bruise on his jaw and a hole in his shoulder.

The other had a messily slit throat. 

Jack had to fight not to throw up for the second time that day. “Hoss, what happened to have you fighting like this?” He had seen slit throats before, it wasn’t a pretty way to go, or a very easy way to kill. And Mac  _ never  _ used his knife to kill. Not so directly as this, not in all the time Jack has known him. It was always a tool to him, seldom a weapon. 

But it didn’t matter, not anymore. The man was dead, and there was no crying over spilled milk. Mac was alive, and that was what mattered. Medevac was coming soon. As Jack held his boy’s body close to him, however, he couldn’t help the intrusive thoughts.  _ It would have been better if he were already dead. Then I could join the both of them. _ No, Mac was alive, and so Mac needed him. You go kaboom, I go kaboom.  _ Track down the men who killed my kids and put a bullet in them all. And another for me. _ Mac was going to need someone to help him through his grief. And Jack needed him just as much. 

Medevac took the limp body from Jack’s arms. He didn’t speak, simply got up and walked into the ambulance after the gurney. Someone asked him questions. It might have been the medics, it might have been Matty or Cage over comms. He didn’t answer, didn’t even register the questions being asked. He didn’t speak the whole way to Phoenix. Hours, maybe. He didn’t know. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the pulse in the bloody hand that Jack didn’t let go of for a second.

Jack didn’t leave when the nurses were settling Mac in at medical. They knew better than to ask him to, by now, or maybe Matty had done some more of her magic. IV lines were placed, an MRI was taken of Mac’s head, the blood was cleaned from his hand. It lingered around his cuticles and in the creases of his hand. Mac didn’t wake up once. 

A small hand barely registered with Jack when he felt it on his arm. Voices swirled around him. If he were paying attention, he would have been able to pick out Cage’s lilting accent, Bozer’s tenor, Leanna and Matty’s soft murmurs. 

His hand began to hurt. Not the left one, holding Mac’s loosely still. The right hand. He was still clutching Riley’s rings. He hadn’t unclenched his fist around them since he picked them up, not even when he was giving his sitrep on Mac. His eyes tracked down slowly to his fist, turning it palm-upward but still not opening it. His hand was shaking. His breath was shaking. Hell, he couldn’t be sure that his entire body wasn’t shaking. 

He opened his hand. Soot stained it, and he had indented deep, painful grooves into his palm. The pain was nothing compared to the agony raging in his heart, behind the wall of numbness that he supposed shock had put up for him. He almost welcomed that temporary pain, because he knew that the ache in his heart would never go away. His Riley. His baby girl.

Mac didn’t stir. Riley wouldn’t ever again. The room wasn’t empty, but it felt like it was as the last of Jack’s defenses crumbled and he sobbed outright, feeling utterly alone.


End file.
